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is interested in helping you to contract your own being.
When the fifth patriarch of Zen, Hung-jen, was asked why he had chosen Hui-neng as his successor out of the five hundred monks in his monastery, he replied: "Four hundred and ninety-nine of my disciples understood Buddhism very well, and only Hui-neng had no understanding of it whatsoever. He is not a man to be measured by any ordinary standard. Hence, the robe of authentic transmission was given to him."
Because he has "no understanding of it whatsoever". An intellectual understanding is not an understanding. It is a deception, it is an illusion, it is a dream, it is a substitute. Because you are missing the real and because you are not courageous enough to accept the fact that you are missing the real, you substitute it. It is a plastic flower. You substitute it with a false thing and then you feel very good. You start thinking that you have it. And you don't have it! Your hands are empty.
Those four hundred ninety-nine disciples of Hung-jen were all scholars. For years they had studied, they had studied all the scriptures. They had all the scriptures on their tongue. And he had chosen a man who has no understanding whatsoever. The man he had chosen, Hui-neng, was not known at all in the monastery. Nobody even was aware that he existed there.
When Hui-neng had come to the Master, the Master had asked him one thing: "Do you really want to know? Do you? Do you want to know about truth, or do you want to know truth itself?" And Hui-neng said, "What will I do by knowing ABOUT the truth? Give me the real thing." And the Master said, "Then go to the kitchen and clean the rice for the mess -- and never come again to me. Whenever the right moment has come I will call you."
Twelve years passed, and Hui-neng was simply working in the kitchen, at the back. People did not even know about him. Nobody knew his name. Who bothers to think about a man who simply goes on working in the kitchen from the morning till late in the night? The monastery was not aware. There were great scholars, famous people; all over China their names were known -- there were celebrities in the ashram. Who bothered
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